Send your work to Peepal Tree Press

Peepal Tree Press is the world’s leading publisher of Caribbean and Black British writing. We publish around 20 titles a year. Founded in 1986, Peepal Tree’s publishing programme has brought readers the best of international writing from the Caribbean, its diasporas and Black British writers. See our website for details of what we publish.

We aim to reply to 90% of all submissions within 12 weeks.

Please select the appropriate category for your submission, and read the guidelines.

We're looking for writing with a
distinctive voice (Is there anything distinctive about the style; can we hear a voice in it?)

We’re looking for novels and collections of short stories that have a degree of originality, that aren’t pale imitations of other books, or treading territory too-often trodden without adding anything new. We like to see:

Writing with a way of
looking at the world (Something that emerges from the way the whole book
adds up, not some pre-planned message that makes the book preachy, a
sermon.)

Writing that uses
narrative as a way to vision (Novelists may have ideas, situations
they want to explore, but what is important is their urge to tell a story)

Writing that gives
characters their heads (This is done through dialogue, interactions with
other characters, access to the character’s inner thoughts. In good
novels, characters can be felt to be taking their authors to places they
may not have planned; in dull novels, you sense characters as puppets
under the author’s control.

Writing that trusts readers:
stop telling and explaining (Show: put the reader in the position of
eyewitness, eves-dropper. Rarely should the writer have to tell the reader
what ought to be interpretable. There’s no crime in making the reader
work. In fact, good readers enjoy the sense of participation.)

Problems with plots,
inconsistencies can be fixed. (That’s what editors do, but inconsistencies
sometimes reveal that authors are not giving characters their heads.

We're looking for writing with a distinctive voice (Is there anything distinctive about the style; can we hear a voice in it?)

We’re looking for novels and collections of short stories that have a degree of originality, that aren’t pale imitations of other books, or treading territory too-often trodden without adding anything new. We like to see:

Writing with a way of looking at the world (Something that emerges from the way the whole book adds up, not some pre-planned message that makes the book preachy, a sermon.)

Writing that uses narrative as a way to vision (Novelists may have ideas, situations they want to explore, but what is important is their urge to tell a story)

Writing that gives characters their heads (This is done through dialogue, interactions with other characters, access to the character’s inner thoughts. In good novels, characters can be felt to be taking their authors to places they may not have planned; in dull novels, you sense characters as puppets under the author’s control.

Writing that trusts readers: stop telling and explaining (Show: put the reader in the position of eyewitness, eves-dropper. Rarely should the writer have to tell the reader what ought to be interpretable. There’s no crime in making the reader work. In fact, good readers enjoy the sense of participation.)

Problems with plots, inconsistencies can be fixed. (That’s what editors do, but inconsistencies sometimes reveal that authors are not giving characters their heads.